


What we weren't supposed to see

by epithalamium



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 18:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17167355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epithalamium/pseuds/epithalamium
Summary: There were a number of studios alloted for principals and Thom checked those first. Two of the rooms were empty, but Thom could see a sliver of light from under the door of the third one. He tried to open the door as quietly as possible, aware that his standing as one of the Academy's top physiologists could only get him so far when it came to disrupting a principal's precious training.Rook wasn't inside. Nor was Amery. Instead, Thom saw Hal in arms of one of the masters.‘Fuck,’ said Thom. And then covered his mouth.





	What we weren't supposed to see

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vulpesvortex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulpesvortex/gifts).



> Happy holidays [vulpesvortex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulpesvortex/pseuds/vulpesvortex)!!! I wanted to write a Roy/Hal ballet AU but I don't know much about ballet at all and was scared of writing it from the dancers's perspective. I hope you don't mind if I used Thom's POV as a peeping Thom while Royston and Hal were dancing :"D
> 
> This fic was heavily heavily inspired by vulpesvortex's fic, [i wanted to tell you this story without having to confess anything](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6488641). I was so intrigued by Royston's half-finished choreography with two male leads and wanted to see him and Hal dancing a pas de deux. 
> 
> There's ... probably too much Thom. Does it count if he was thinking of Roy/Hal all the time? orz

Almost midnight and Thom wouldn't be here at the Academy at all had he not come home to a dark and empty flat with no dinner--nor the prospects of it--in sight. Normally he would have shrugged it off and prepared a meal himself, but this was the third time in a month that his brother had ditched his cooking responsibilities in favour of trying to get one of the principals in some empty closet for a quick shag. 

So far, Rook had been unsuccessful in his seduction of Amery, but if this was the night he got lucky--well, Thom was going to make sure it wasn't. He took his dinner very seriously, as Rook should know. 

There were a number of studios alloted for principals and Thom checked those first. The corps generally avoided those studios if they knew the principals were practising or training, except Rook never cared about propriety and being considerate. Two of the rooms were empty, but Thom could see a sliver of light from under the door of the third one. He tried to open the door as quietly as possible, aware that his standing as one of the Academy's top physiologists could only get him so far when it came to disrupting a principal's precious training. 

Rook wasn't inside. Nor was Amery. Instead, Thom saw Hal in arms of one of the masters. 

‘Fuck,’ said Thom. And then covered his mouth. It was none of his business, really. Hal had been giving Royston moony eyes since--well, Thom could only vouch for Hal's time in the Academy but he was willing to bet Hal had been carrying the torch for Royston longer than that. The man had made quite a name for himself as one of the Academy’s principals and even Thom had a bill for one of Royston's performances tacked on the wall of his bedroom. 

Neither men seemed to have noticed Thom cursing and gawking at them from the doorway, intent as they were on their routine. Because that was what they were doing: dancing, not canoodling. Maybe Thom was spending too much time with Rook. 

Thom watched as Royston helped Hal ease into a penché. Hal's movements were allongé--in fact, what part of the adagio Thom has seen so far looked too slow to sustain for long. Hal was pushing at his body's limits, with Royston moving in to lessen the strain as much as possible. It was intriguing but risky. Then again, Royston wasn't known in the ballet world for his conservative choreography. 

And he asked a lot from the dancers; Royston was a strict master but not an unkind one. Thom had seen Hal improve vastly under his tutelage--under Royston's critical eye Hal had managed to unlearn the small mistakes that put unnecessary strain on his body and his tendency to mislay his core. Hal owed his quick rise to the rank of principal to his own talent and hard work of course, but it was Royston who had shown him how to get there without getting himself killed. 

Rook had a lot of unsavoury things to say about that, but Thom liked to think it was from envy rather than a prejudice against men who loved other men. After all, Royston wasn’t singularly responsible for promoting ballet dancers to higher ranks and even Rook had to admit Hal was as good as his press. His recent performance with Laure was proof of that. 

But this was different. Where Hal and Laure moved in complementing harmony--Hal with a tentative curiosity that played well against Laure's stolid self-assurance--Royston's presence seemed to have flipped a switch within Hal. The chemistry between them was certainly different, but most important was the yearning that was so obvious in Hal. 

Thom had always thought the adagio in a pas de deux was more of the ballerina's moment than her danseur's. Supporting and lifting the weight of another person while making it look graceful and effortless was no easy task for the danseur, but it was a role that worked when it attracted no undue attention to itself. A well-made trellis wasn't the main attraction, but the flowering vine it supported was. 

But Royston was no well-made trellis; at least that wasn't the picture Hal was painting with his body language. If he was a flower, then Royston was the sun that he sought. Once the variations started and both dancers made to show off their individual skills, Hal followed Royston's movements almost hungrily, seeking to maintain physical contact whenever possible. 

From the looks of him, Royston seemed to be enjoying the attention. He had that same glow to him that Thom remembered from when Royston was still performing on the stage regularly. It was as if the sun decided to focus all it's warmth and light on one hungry flower. To be fair, Thom thought Royston was too morose to play the role of the sun, but that was the fault of Thom's taste in metaphors rather than Hal's taste in men. 

Hal was having a hard time with the arabesque--also allongé, but requiring a rhythm that Hal can't seem to catch. Royston kept asking him to repeat the steps and the frown on Hal's face deepened with each mistake. 

Royston laughed, reaching out so he could rub at Hal's furrowed brows with the tip of his fingers.

‘You’re almost there,’ he said. ‘But you don't want to scare people off with that face.’ 

Hal dropped out of the arabesque and almost stumbled. ‘Oh. I forgot what my face was doing.’ 

What his face was currently doing was turning red; Thom could see it even from several feet away.

‘It's not a bad expression,’ said Royston. ‘But perhaps not very fitting for this dance.’ 

That made Hal laugh, his good humour returning as he went back to dancing. It took him a few more tries before Royston was satisfied and the pair moved on to the coda. 

Thom thought Royston was being uncharacteristically patient--he’d made ballet dancers cry with his sharp tongue before. But it was only fair that he'd take the complexity of the choreography into account. Even a seasoned principal like Amery would still have a hard time with it. 

And Royston was dancing with Hal. People who weren't as obviously enamored with Hal as Royston was would still have a hard time scolding the young man: it was like kicking a puppy. Even Thom couldn’t, not even when Hal had sprained his ankle out of sheer stubbornness. 

Thom thought of the several weeks of panic that followed as everyone wondered if Hal would recover in time for his first performance as a principal. He was shaken out of his stressful memories as Royston supported Hal in a fish dive. As far as steps go, the fish wasn't that hard to execute but the silhouette was beautiful and it was a favourite for pas de deux. 

The pair dipped low, their right hands pointing down--Hal's almost touching the floor while his legs curved gracefully over Royston's head. The muscles in Royston's arm strained around Hal's waist as they held that position, and Hal looked up to smile at his partner.

Thom felt his face warm. The coda was, for lack of a better word, _obscene_. It wasn't overtly sexual, although the chemistry between the two was certainly charged enough--the two could barely keep their hands off each other. But Thom still felt uncomfortable watching Hal and Royston from the shadows. It was as if he'd barged inside someone's room and read their diary; a private moment that wasn't necessarily meant for an audience. But Royston must have considered having the dance performed on stage--the choreography was too good to be a training piece. 

Perhaps it was because they thought they were alone, their emotions unguarded with each other unlike if this had been a public performance. Thom shuffled back to the door, trying to make as little noise as possible. He really should think about what to get for dinner.

*

‘Did you hear that?’ said Royston, looking around the studio with a frown.

‘Hm?’ Hal was wiping his face with a towel but he popped out of the cottony depths to look at Royston. 

‘I thought I heard a noise.’ Royston held out a hand before Hal could say anything about paranoia. ‘And I'm not “still hung up on it”, I'm simply making an observation.’ 

‘Perhaps it's one of the principals finishing up,’ Hal suggested. 

Royston appreciated this; Hal never complained and his teasing of Royston's decision to keep their training a secret was only done in good nature, but he deserved more than this. Now they have taken that one step further in their relationship, Royston disliked keeping things under wraps. ‘It's not that I'm ashamed of you, or this dance--’

Hal laughed. ‘I know, Royston. You don't have to tell me.’ 

‘But I want to.’ Royston moved closer so he could touch Hal's face, lifting it up from the towel. ‘I want to tell everyone how happy I am. How proud I am of you.’ 

Hal blushed and for a moment Royston thought he was going to hide behind his towel again, but he didn't move except to smile. ‘Having you here is enough for me.’ 

‘You're training very hard for this.’

‘I can wait.’

And wasn't that so very much like Hal, that stubbornness that got him in trouble sometimes and his tendency to keep hold of what he has. 

‘Let's hope it's not for long.’ Royston was still thinking, weighing the risks and the strings he could pull. This dance was not going to waste. ‘But for now you need to rest.’ 

‘My flat is so far,’ said Hal, his eyes wide. 

Royston laughed. ‘And mine is just around the corner. How fortunate.’ He leaned down to kiss Hal's forehead. ‘You _do_ need rest, however.’ 

‘I'm sure I can manage that,’ said Hal. ‘Later.’

*

There was a stall that sold chestnuts outside the gates of the Academy and Thom bought a small bag before heading back home. The snow had stopped but the night was cold and a thick dusting of snow remained on every flat surface. Thom wrapped his hands around the warm bag of chestnuts as he walked down the streets of Miranda.

The flat he shared with Rook was half an hour's walk from the Academy, a short distance that took longer than it should because of the crowd outside the theatres. The night's performance had just ended and Thom tried to walk as close to the walls as possible in order not to be swallowed by the crush. He was glad the streets of Miranda were too narrow to allow the use of carriages; he wasn’t tall like his brother and the danger of getting trampled by horses felt more real when most of the beasts were taller than he was. 

A portly man jostled Thom and he almost dropped his bag of chestnuts. He reached out, steadying himself with one hand against the bill-encrusted wall of the Muse. People loved stealing posters of popular plays (Hal and Laure's performance was a recent favourite and the Academy had to keep reprinting the bastion damned posters) and at one point the Muse decided to have someone Talent the bills onto the walls permanently. That worked out as well as one would expect and they put a stop to it before the bills could form a new wall outside the theatre. 

Thom wondered what the poster for Royston's new dance would look like. Perhaps an illustration of Royston and Hal doing the fish dive, with Hal's face just as Thom remembered: smiling with a certain softness Thom had never seen before. And Royston looking back at Hal as if he wanted to burn the image of that smile onto his brain.

Thom felt his own face get warm again and he hurried away from the Muse without bothering to apologise for stepping on toes and hitting someone’s side with his elbow. 

It would be a performance to rival Josette and Temur's ‘Star-crossed Lovers’--one of the legendary pas de deux in recent memory and the reason why Thom ended up at the Academy in the first place. He couldn’t dance to save his life, but he still wanted to be a part of it, to interact with the people who wove their spells not by drinking from the Well but through long hours of practise and hard work. 

Seeing Royston and Hal dance reminded Thom of that feeling; a certain mix of excitement and anxiety that pulled at his gut. He wanted to see them perform again, wanted to analyse their movements and see the references he'd missed the first time. 

He wanted this dance performed on stage so he could share that feeling with the audience. This was probably Royston's best work yet and it would be such a shame not to share it with the rest of the world. 

But Thom knew such a performance would cause a scandal. It was unheard of to have two male leads, and while Thremedon was a forgiving city there was a chance the audience would dismiss Royston's oeuvre as a mere gimmick. 

And it was far from that. Perhaps Royston had conceived of this dance before he met Hal--Thom could see Royston sitting on the idea, seduced by the beauty of it but unsure about taking the risk. Perhaps it was Hal who had inspired him to finish it. And have it performed. 

‘What a waste.’ 

‘What?’ Rook was in the middle of unlocking the door to their flat, but turned to give Thom the hairy eyeball. ‘Got somethin’ to say, Professor?’ 

Thom was not a professor, but he did give the corps lessons on anatomy aside from making sure the dancers weren't pulling muscles right and left. ‘Where have you been? It's your turn to make dinner.’ 

Rook held out what Thom assumed was fish and chips wrapped in brown paper. ‘What do you think? I was fucking training. Isn't that what you keep mouthin’ off about?’ 

‘Hm,’ said Thom, heading inside their flat before Rook could. 

‘And where have _you_ been?’ 

‘I was thinking,’ said Thom. ‘The esarina is a patron of the Academy, isn't she?’

‘Doesn't miss the new performances. What of it?’

‘Maybe it's time she officially endorsed some of them.’ Thom tossed his bag of chestnuts on the table before hurrying inside his room for writing implements. ‘I just got an idea.’

‘And you're not waiting until after dinner?’ said Rook. ‘D’you hit your head somewhere?’

Thom smiled. ‘I might have.’

*


End file.
